


that which dies and becomes once again whole

by Anonymous



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Resurrection, i'm resurrecting him but i have to kill both ghostbur and vilbur to do it, major character death is wilbur but he's fine, this is NOT rpf this is about the CHARACTERS i stg, well. happy-ish, wilbur soot therapy arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 13:47:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30022698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: “You, my little Ghostbur. The pretty bits that bled out of me when Phil ran me through with that sword. There’s a hole in me, now. Right here.” He taps his chest, where the mustard-yellow of his shirt is still stained dark brown with blood. “I know you feel it too. And neither of us can really come back while it still exists.”“I don’t understand.”Alivebur’s smile forms like a slash across his face, sharp and cutting and deadly. “Yes, you do,” he says. “I’m missing parts, and now I’m here to collect.”Two ghosts meet in a field of flowers.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 50
Collections: Anonymous





	that which dies and becomes once again whole

**Author's Note:**

> eyyyy posting this anonymously because i am Embarrassed and i don't want anyone subscribed to me to see me post something tagged as RPF and Attack me but ANYWAYS. wrote the majority of this in a haze at 3am. enjoy.
> 
> Warning(s): (temporary) character death, violence (non-graphic), depersonalization/derealization (mild/non-explicit), issues with self-worth, blood, cursing. additionally, the writing switches to 2nd person perspective in the middle for artistic reasons which i mention because i know it bothers some people.

It is a good day.

Ghostbur is standing in a field of buttercups and daisies, stretching from hill to hill as far as the eye can see until reaching the horizon line where clear blue meets and mingles with butter-yellow and snow-white. His arms are full of flowers and the breeze is pleasantly warm—not that he can feel such things as warmth, anymore, but with the way the sun is turning his edges transparent, and with the way the flowers bend and sway, Ghostbur imagines that there is a breeze on his skin, and that it is in fact pleasantly warm. 

It is a good day. It is always a good day; bad days are for nightmares and forgetting. Today is neither nightmare nor forgotten horror; today he is walking in a field, humming a song, alone and at peace save for the butterflies and beetles and honeybees that flit from blossom to blossom. Tubbo likes honeybees, Ghostbur remembers. The thought brings a smile to his face and he crouches down, stowing the handful of flowers in the basket currently swinging from his elbow. Down here, among the flowers, is a microcosm; between the stalks and heads of the flowers, ants march in steady lines and pollinators hurry about their busy work. Ghostbur watches this hustle and bustle of life in the miniature, fascinated.

He stays like that, watching, for an amount of time that he does not see the point in tracking. Exact time doesn't matter much to him—when the sun starts to set, he will head back towards civilization and bring flowers to all of his friends. Phil would like some, he thinks. Phil and Tommy and Fundy and maybe even Niki (if he can find her) and anyone he else meets who looks like they might be sad. People are sad here often, he’s noticed, and he’s not sure how he feels about that.

Ghostbur stops humming and instead opens his mouth to form a little song about ants. It doesn’t make much sense—the words don’t even rhyme, really—but he doesn’t really care. There’s no one around to hear it, anyway. No one except for the ants, and he doubts they mind. 

“Do ants have music?” Ghostbur muses aloud, reaching out a finger to pick up one of the creatures and holding it up close to his eyes. “Well, do you?”

“If they do, I doubt it sounds like that.”

Ghostbur startles. This in itself is strange; as a ghost it is usually _he_ that's the one startling other people and not vice versa. He stands, turning as he does so, the ants forgotten.

There is a man in the field just a few paces away. 

Ghostbur stares and stares and stares, and then stares some more just to be certain he’s not hallucinating. There is a lot he notices about the man, and none of it he likes very much. In fact, he’s beginning to feel a bit ill. This shouldn’t be possible, he thinks. This can’t happen. This shouldn’t happen. This can’t—

Dark curls and a long coat, both dancing in the wind the way physical things do. Piercing eyes, blood-red and cunning. Hands in pockets, casual stance, crooked smile, jagged scars. _Danger,_ scream those eyes and that smile. _Danger, danger, danger_.

“It wouldn’t be a happy little ditty, I mean. I’d imagine it would probably be some sort of work song.” 

The distance between them is suddenly nothing at all and there is a hand on Ghostbur’s wrist—a solid flesh hand, warm and tangible—, lifting his arm up so that they may both admire the forgotten ant as it runs frantically across his knuckles. “Of course,” says the man who should be dead, “ants don’t sing in real life, now do they?” 

And with that said, he plucks the ant up in between finger and thumb and crushes it, and smiles.

“Hi,” says Ghostbur, because there is a feeling in his chest that he does not like one bit and maybe if he’s friendly enough he can make it go away, “I’m Ghostbur. Would you like a flower?”

“Oh, I know who you are,” says the dead man. “You’re all the bits I left behind. Pure, innocent little Ghostbur. Happy little Ghostbur, sweet and dead and forgotten. Tell me, Ghostbur, do you ever wonder why none of them can stand to look you in the eye? Why they all hate you, why they need so much blue? Haven’t you noticed how they can’t stand to be around you?”

“That’s not true,” says Ghostbur, but he is thinking suddenly of all the times he is forgotten about and left behind and ignored and snapped at and told to just _go away_. “That’s not true! They’re my friends and they love me, because I love them.”

The dead man chuckles darkly and shakes his head. “God, you’re so fucking naive,” he says. “It’s a real talent, you know, being able to keep your head in the dirt like that. I’m almost impressed.”

Ghostbur wants to get away. His head feels all funny, the way it does when he starts to remember all the things he’s tried so hard to forget. He wants to fade into the sunlight or into the soil, become one with the blue of the sky or the yellow of the flowers. Today was a good day, and he wants that feeling back. Most of all, he just wants to be somewhere else, but the man’s grip on his wrist is vice-like, keeping him grounded and more tangible than he’s been in...ever, really. He can feel the breeze in his hair, he notices, and that scares him more than anything. This is wrong, he thinks. This is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong.

“Please let go of me,” he tries. “I don’t think you’re being very nice.”

“No,” muses the man. “No, I suppose I’m not. But that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? I’m not nice, and neither are you, really. That’s why they hate you, by the way.”

Ghostbur is shaking his head and flinching away, but the man still will not let him go. He leans in close, the space between their eyes reduced to millimeters, and when he speaks his voice is low and cold as ice. “Because when they look at you, all they see is me.”

“You’re Alivebur,” says Ghostbur. “You’re...you’re the me that went insane. You’re the one Philza killed. You—you blew up L’Manberg.”

“Don’t call me that,” says the man. “That’s a stupid fucking name. Don’t call me that. But yes, that’ll be me. Wilbur Soot, the big villain in all your history books.”

“But you’re dead.”

“So?” says Alivebur, and finally lets go of Ghostbur so that he can instead spread his arms dramatically. “Look at you. You’re not looking so alive yourself.”

“But—”

“—that’s different? No, it isn’t.” The man puts his hands back in his pockets and surveys Ghostbur with those unnaturally red eyes. Were Ghostbur’s eyes red? He doesn’t think so, but memory is a tricky thing when you are a ghost. “At least, not in the way you’re thinking. I _am_ dead. Or, I was. Not anymore, though. I’m back.”

“How?” asks Ghostbur.

Alivebur shrugs. “Doesn’t matter, really,” he says, in a nonchalant tone that only serves to increase Ghostbur’s anxiety all the more. “What matters is I’m back and I’m missing pieces, so to speak.”

“Pieces?”

“You,” says Alivebur, and Ghostbur knows that if he had a spine he would have felt a chill travel down it. As it is, however, he just feels off-balance and afraid in ways he’s tried so hard to forget. “You, my little Ghostbur. The pretty bits that bled out of me when Phil ran me through with that sword. There’s a hole in me, now. Right here.” He taps his chest, where the mustard-yellow of his shirt is still stained dark brown with blood. “I know you feel it too. And neither of us can really come back while it still exists.”

“I don’t understand.”

Alivebur’s smile forms like a slash across his face, sharp and cutting and deadly. “Yes, you do,” he says. “I’m missing parts, and now I’m here to collect.”

Ghostbur takes an involuntary step backwards, the basket of flowers slipping from his fingers to scatter its lovely contents in the grass around them. “No,” he says. “No, I don’t think I like this very much. I don’t—you’re not very nice. I don’t like you. Just—just go away.”

The dead man’s smile drops from his face, leaving something far colder behind it. He gestures in the air with his hand and then he is holding a sword, the metal gleaming in the sunlight. “Draw your sword, Ghostbur,” he says.

“I don’t have one.”

“Of course not,” says Alivebur, and rolls his eyes. “Because you’re sweet little Ghostbur. Lucky I brought an extra.” He summons a second sword from the air and tosses it to Ghostbur, who fails to catch it. It hits the grass at his feet with a gentle thud, crushing blossoms and stems beneath it.

“Pick it up.”

Ghostbur is already shaking his head. “I don’t want to,” he says.

Alivebur frowns, brow furrowing in impatience and anger. “Pick it up, Ghostbur,” he repeats in a predator’s growl.

“No!”

Metal flashes in the air as the dead man slashes his sword in a brutal arc, beheading the flowers in a semi-circle around him. “Pick it up!” he snaps, and the rage in his voice is enough to scare Ghostbur into compliance. The sword feels wrong in his hand, though he finds his fingers fit the molding of the leather of the hilt exactly. This was his sword, once. He doesn’t want it anymore.

“Good,” says the dead man. “Good. Now, here’s what we’re going to do: you are going to take that sword and run it through my chest, and I am going to do the same to you. Got it?”

Ghostbur wants to run but the weight of the sword is like an anchor holding him still. Everything is spinning. The sun, so pleasant before, feels too bright, and the gentle dance and sway of the flowers seem to mock him. Things like this should happen in more dramatic locations, like cliff-sides and dark rooms, and on days that are stormy and violent to fit the bloody events that fill them. This shouldn’t happen in a field of flowers, on a day that should have been good. 

“I don’t want this,” says Ghostbur weakly, though he knows even as he says it that it is futile.

“Tough,” snaps Alivebur. “We’re doing it.” He takes several steps forward, closing the distance, and places his off-hand on Ghostbur’s shoulder in preparation. Despite himself, Ghostbur finds himself mimicking the action, drawing the sword back to plunge it into his mirror’s heart.

“Ready?”

“No,” says Ghostbur, but it is too late. He is moving, and Alivebur is moving, and then there is cold metal through his chest and the scent of iron on the air. The sickening feeling of the blade through his heart is familiar, and no less horrible for it. The world narrows, falling away until there is only the pain and the fear and Alivebur’s red eyes staring into his and Alivebur’s unhinged laughter filling the air and the sound of his own voice sobbing and someone is screaming and then—

* * *

You are very young when you first pick up the guitar.

You are not very good, at first. Your fingers are clumsy on the fretboard, and you cannot for the life of you maintain the steady rhythm of the strum pattern while also changing chords. It frustrates you to tears more than once, but your father is always there to gently guide your hands off of the strings and distract you with something else until you are feeling better.

You improve as you grow, the notes coming with ease until you are writing songs of your own. You love the way it feels, to create, to spin words and melodies from thin air and bring them to life with the practiced movement of your fingers and the call of your voice. You are still frustrated, sometimes, but you love it anyway, and your father smiles to hear you sing.

When you are older, you create something different. It has been a while since you last left home, but you still write letters so it is not so bad. There is a new life here, you find, in this foreign land of new friends and possibility. You set aside your guitar and build something else—a new home, for you and your friends to live in. And that is what it was always meant to be: a home.

Except then it is not a home. It is a battlefield. You never wanted violence, and yet here you find yourself defending your creation with your own sweat and tears and blood. You refuse to wear armor because you are a poet, not a soldier, but your sword becomes a familiar weight regardless and new calluses form on your hands from its hilt, even as those on your fingertips—the ghosts of old songs—steadily fade away. You do not want this, but you will defend your home until your last breath.

And you win. Somehow, you win. And you think, this is what you were made for. To create nations out of nothing, to fight against impossible odds to defend them and to _win_. You wrote this country into existence like one of your songs and you are giddy with the beauty of it. You do not have wings like your father, but as the sun rises over your victory you think you know what it is to fly.

Perhaps that is why when you fall, you fall so terribly far.

You are in a cramped space underground. You have nothing. You are nothing. You did not even bring your guitar. You gave _everything_ for that which you built, and without it, what are you? The sickening feeling of loss grows like a monster inside of your chest, spreading through every inch of you like a wildfire and devouring you from the inside out. If the world wants you to be a soldier so badly, then so be it. You will never drop your sword. You will become an avenger, and you will get your most beautiful creation back.

Soon enough, the fire and the monster and the gaping hole you cannot fill is all that is left of you. Nothing but ashes in the shape of a person.

You win once again, but this time it feels hollow. You barely recognize your home, your poem, your symphony. Someone else has taken your score and edited out all the parts that were yours, replacing them with motifs and phrases that you do not recognize, meters and key signatures and articulation that you did not write. Your symphony is gone now, unfinished for eternity, and that would be fine except that it was all that was left of you. Without it, you are only the ashes.

Ashes to ashes, you suppose. Dust to dust. If this cannot be your symphony then you will watch it burn.

You are standing in a dark room with an old song scribbled on the walls. You hear screaming outside, but you find you do not have it in you to care. You are so very weary of war. 

When you were a child, and your music went wrong, you would tear up the paper in anger and bury your face in your hands. More than once, you wanted to take your guitar and smash it into a million pieces, but each time your father would stop you with his patient voice and hands. He would help you talk through it, saving the pieces you liked and revising those that you didn’t, until the song was done and you loved it. Then you would sing it for him, and he would watch with a smile on his face and pride in his eyes.

This is the same, you think. This is the same. And your hand is on the button, and your father is here, and your symphony is gone for good. The only difference is that there is no pride in his eyes, in the last moments before the darkness takes you. Then again, what exactly have you given him to be proud of?

You are in a dark space with someone you despise. You are in the ruins of a familiar home that did not look like this when you left it. You are confused. You are resigned. You are dead. You are hollow.

You don’t know who you are.

You play cards, and collect flowers. You laugh and laugh as if the sound of it will somehow fill the gaping hole in your chest. You collect blue dye and yellow flowers and smile so hard you forget about the pain. You never know peace, with your demons here, mocking you, and you are never alone. The blue sheep is the only one who does not look at you as if it is seeing someone else, something twisted and dark and ugly and dead, and you are so, so alone. You are dead, you are a ghost, you are forgotten, you are forgetting, you cannot forget.

There is nothing left. You cannot remember the music.

You are standing in a field of poppies, blood-red hills sprawling out in all directions.

* * *

When he opens his eyes, he finds himself on the ground, hunched over and kneeling amongst the flowers.

He feels...he doesn’t know how he feels. The anger is there, still, and the sadness, but they are dulled, and not in the way of forgetting. He remembers everything—what he’s done, who he’s hurt, what he is. He remembers the bitter anger and unending grief of loss; the way it had grown like some horrible beast in his chest, raging and growing and eating him up from the inside out. By the time he died, he doesn’t think there was very much left of him at all. Just the monster living inside of his still-breathing corpse.

 _Breathing_. He is breathing now, he notices. Real, living breaths, in and out through a dry throat that is sore from screaming or laughing or both. He lifts a trembling hand to feel his chest, too afraid to look, but the gaping wound he is expecting is no longer there, his fingers finding only the soft wool of his sweater. He looks down and something wet falls onto his hand. It takes him an embarrassingly long time to realize that it is a tear.

Oh. He’s crying. He can’t remember the last time he did that.

He is sad, he thinks. Perhaps he will always be sad, but—

But.

He also feels...whole. 

The realization of his newfound completeness, the absence of the near-physical presence of _emptiness_ , runs through him like a shock. He doubles over, pressing his face into his knees and breathing in the scents of soil and crushed grass. He cries harder, proper gasping sobs, rattling through his chest like great earthquakes in the solid dirt of a cavity that is no longer there, tears running down his cheeks to mix into mud, and it feels good, because it means he is alive.

Oh, god, he is alive.

Eventually, the sobbing ceases and his breathing evens out enough for him to get a grasp on himself again. He sits back and inhales deeply, then lets it out and takes in the blue of the sky above, the green of the grass, the red and yellow and white of the flowers. He is alive, and he is whole, the sun on his skin and the patched up hole in his chest. He is still patchwork, still stitched together, still a bit broken and a bit angry and sad—he thinks, after all that has been, that these things will always be true—but he is whole, he is whole, he is whole, and that is what matters.

It is a good day, Wilbur thinks, and runs his fingers over the petals of a flower. Yes, it is a good day. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> normally this is where i'd plug my tumblr but this time i will Not do that. drop a comment if you enjoyed and if you are so inclined! thanks for reading!


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